THE KING OF BANALITY

There is far more to the failure of question time than the weakness of the questions — from all parties concerned — or the lack of spontaneity or relevance surrounding the event

Few things are more remarkable than president’s question time in the national assembly. Jacob Zuma, fundamentally compromised on a wide variety of fronts, holds court for two hours every three months, in deference to the constitutional demand that the legislature hold the executive to account. Alas, to no avail. It is, perhaps, the ultimate pretence — a game, essentially. And there is only ever one winner: Zuma.

When it is all done, inevitably you are left feeling defeated, as if he got away with something — which, of course, he did.

But you are not quite sure how. Questions were put. Answers were given. And yet, it’s as if question time never took place at all.

Yes, the rules are stacked. Questions are submitted two weeks prior to the occasion, robbing the exchange of spontaneity and relevance. The speaker rarely, if ever, actually regulates the president’s replies — the fact that words come out of his mouth seems to be enough to satisfy the demand that he “answer” the political puzzles put to him.

And the ANC’S majority allows it to dominate the question paper, an opportunity it uses to ridicule oversight by posing only the most inane inquiries, the answers to which could be easily gleaned from any given departmental website.

If last week’s question time was anything to go by, the problem is often supplemented by the opposition, the members of which ask questions no less futile in conception and effect. After a long series of introductory remarks — so long, in fact, he almost didn’t get to ask a question at all — DA leader Mmusi Maimane eventually got to the crux of his concern: “Does the president believe he is the best person to lead SA?”

No prizes for guessing Zuma’s response to that particular conundrum: “I’m fit and I am doing it very well.” You almost feel he could have added, “Next?”

And so it goes. It is an exercise in futility. And yet we keep playing. Because it’s the only game we’ve got.

Looking on from the outside, the paradox you are left with is this: how is it possible that someone so profoundly enmeshed in a categorical crisis is able to escape, week after week, any real sense of acknowledgment or contrition? That is what you expect of any cross-examination: that the facts – of which there are many when it comes to Zuma – are placed before the accused in such compelling fashion that he or she must face them and acquiesce to their veracity.

But not Zuma. That is to assume he sees the world through your eyes. And he does not.

And yet there is more to it than that.

Zuma exudes some additional quality, hard to define but which aids his evasiveness. He seems to revel in a kind of obvious facileness, so mundane in its formulation and simultaneously so obscure and irrelevant it leaves you befuddled. Not so much Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil as the evil of banality.

He said last week, in response to a question from the Freedom Front’s Corné Mulder about his attitude regarding the idea of a secret ballot: “You are trying to get a majority you don’t have, by saying ‘secret ballot’. I think it’s not fair because you are trying to increase the majority you don’t have.”

Well, yes. Obviously. The entire point of any vote, of lobbying and persuasion, is to

What it means: President’s question time has become an exercise in futility — with the president always walking away, unscathed by the encounter